When asked about Andy Street, the cabbie driving ConHome from Sandwell and Dudley railway station to West Bromwich was mystified: “I don’t where it is.”
But on realising this was a question about Andy Street the West Midlands Mayor, who tomorrow is up for re-election, the driver became effusive: “I think he’s done a really good job.
“Honest opinion – Birmingham is going forward. I think we were left behind, especially on transport.
“London has the Underground. Now we have the tram, the transport connecting the whole of the West Midlands together, and that is a good idea I think.”
So how will the driver, a Muslim in his fifties, vote tomorrow? “I’m not a Conservative, never have been,” he replied. “I vote Labour, but I have to speak truth, whoever’s done a good job.
“You have to think not just about your party but about your country. I think he’s done tremendously well in the area.”
The driver admitted with a laugh: “Yes, I will vote for him.”
According to the opinion polls, the race between Street and his Labour challenger Richard Parker is too close to call. This may well turn out to be the case, but one would not have known it from talking to people in West Bromwich, about half way between Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
When ConHome visited West Brom at the start of the 2019 general election, drinkers declared their strong support for Boris Johnson and Brexit, and strong antipathy towards Jeremy Corbyn and also towards Labour’s Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, since 2001 the MP for West Bromwich East.
As one woman declared, “I will definitely vote for Boris, liar, cheat and fool! And for Brexit! I want to get out.”
The picture now is much less clear cut. In December 2019, anger with the political Establishment, which was trying to thwart Brexit, was often expressed by voting for Boris, who promised to get Brexit done.
Rishi Sunak has no comparable means of harnessing anti-Establishment feeling – unless, that is, he can stop the boats. For they were the issue most often mentioned by drinkers, in the same pub as ConHome reported from in 2019, where a pint of IPA can be bought for £2.70, about half what it would cost in London.
There are still Conservative supporters in West Brom. An electrician said of Street: “He does a good job, definitely. He’s done a load of good for the transport. The trams are good. I think he’ll win this time.”
The electrician said he could never vote Labour, but went on: “The boat problem. That’s the big problem. They’ve got to sort it out.”
He did not, however, blame Rishi Sunak: “He comes across as a decent bloke, actually. That Liz Truss, how long did she last? Forty-nine days. You have to rely on the people who work for you to back you. Some of these politicians don’t back you.”
This seemed to be a rebuke to those Conservatives who seek to undermine Sunak, but there was no time to check, for the electrician suddenly started on a new train of thought: “And then the other problem, the House of Lords, do away with it.
“It’s too Old Establishment that is. Jobs for the boys. I’ve read they get about £400 for turning up. Is that true?”
ConHome: “I think it’s a bit less than £400.”
Electrician: “And then half of them fall asleep.”
ConHome: “Would you consider supporting Reform?”
The electrician shook his head. Nor did anyone else in West Brom express support for Reform.
A man who worked for 45 years in a foundry making “engines, brake systems, steering columns, everything” said in a fury: “It’s all right for the big wigs: they pay so much money to the big wigs. The water company this year has given £2.5 billion to the shareholders.
“This country thinks about shareholders more than it thinks about us. We have to pay for all the infrastructure, put it f—ing right.
“They use the water board as an investment for foreign countries. They use the water board as an offshore account. Am I right? Why do we have to pay?
“Why pay investors good money when they’re robbing us?”
The foundry worker approved of Street: “He has put a lot of money into infrastructure, I’ll give him that.”
But he is furious to think of politicians earning “£750 a day in the House of Commons”, keen to “abolish the House of Lords”, and also wishes to “abolish the Human Rights and then all these people on the boats couldn’t come here.
“We’re second-class citizens in our own f—ing country.”
He is not keen on Sunak: “He even got rid of Boris Johnson. He stabbed him in the back. It would be fantastic to get Boris back.”
Another man, a retired packer and loader, declared: “I stand by what I say, what Enoch Powell said, there’ll be rivers of blood in this country.”
A generation ago, angry men in pubs could often be heard saying “Enoch was right”, but now it has become rare to hear his name, and when Street was interviewed in 2017 by ConHome he said Powell was “never mentioned”.
“They’re all on the take,” a morose old man said of the politicians. “Why vote for anybody?
“Who’d even have thought when we were kids that the country would turn out like this?”
On the other side of the pub, a 34-year-old surveyor, of part Arab and part Irish descent, said he supported Corbyn, who “got made a scapegoat – they brought stuff up about the IRA”, even though it was actually the Tories who “sold the country a lie”.
The trouble, he said, is that “the public are mis-educated” and fell for Brexit, which was “fundamentally racist”, while the appointment of Sunak as PM was “tokenistic – I see him as weak – I can’t take him seriously.”
The surveyor is strongly opposed to the Rwanda plan: “You can’t do that! Someone’s getting money, aren’t they? There’s money somewhere.”
Outside in the sunshine, a man offered me a copy of the Koran in English: I thanked him and said I already have one. Almost everyone in West Brom was friendly, and happy to have a chat with a stranger.
In the main shopping street, shown in the photograph above this article, many of the premises were neatly boarded up, and the others were mostly charging very low prices: £12 for a pair of shoes, £8 for a pair of trousers, £1.50 for a snack lunch of a small sausage roll, a bar of chocolate and a carton of drink.
Candles, messages and a pile of flowers commemorate Isaac Brown, 15, who was stabbed to death in West Brom on 7th April.
An 84-year-old lady who arrived from Jamaica in 1961, and worked as a domestic in the hospital, was sitting on a bench with her nephew, who came here in 1966 and worked as a mechanic.
She intends to vote, said she never decides how until she arrives at the polling station, “but I’m real Labour because I’m a labourer”. She recalled how after her nephew was born “I carried him to be blessed at the church in Jamaica”.
In her view, convicted prisoners are treated too leniently: “If it was me ruling they’d bring back the cane and beat out the devil. They’d never come back into prison again.”
Here was a reminder of the conservatism of many traditional Labour voters.
The pollsters try to make sense of things by telling us over and over again that the Conservatives are very unpopular. This may be true, but seems to proceed, in a place like West Brom, from a much more general discontent with politicians.
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Author: Andrew Gimson
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